In conclusion; a committee, consisting of Drs. Blatchford, of New York, Hodge, of Pennsylvania, Pope, of Missouri, Barton, of South Carolina, Lopez, of Alabama, Semmes, of the District of Columbia, Brisbane, of Wisconsin, and the writer, was appointed by the National Medical Association, at its meeting at Nashville, in 1857, to report upon criminal abortion, with a view to its general suppression. The report of this committee, brief, but in strict accordance with the series of papers now ended, has lately been made to the Association, at its session held at Louisville, in May of the present year. The report was accepted, and the resolutions appended to it[275] were unanimously adopted.
In behalf of the committee, of whom he had the honor to be chairman, the writer cannot close this portion of his labors without thanking the physicians of the land, represented as they are by the Association, for their hearty and noble response to the appeal that has been made them. He would express, were it possible, the gratitude not of individuals, but society; for by this act the profession has again been true to “its mighty and responsible office of shutting the great gates of human death.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] So far as the writer is aware, there exists, in this or any other language, no paper upon the subject at all commensurate with its importance. The chapters devoted to it in medical text-books, though some of them admirable so far as they go, especially that of Beck, are defective and often erroneous; while but little information of any value can be found elsewhere. In the French periodicals have appeared articles on special points hereafter referred to; in Great Britain able arguments regarding the commencement of fœtal life have been made by Radford, (1848;) and in this country, with remarks on the frequency of the crime, by Hodge, of Philadelphia, (1839 and 1854,) and by the present Professor of Obstetrics in Harvard University, (1855.) To the latter, his father, and to the journalists (Drs. Morland and Minot, of Boston,) by whom the effort then made was so warmly and eloquently seconded, the writer acknowledges his indebtedness for the thought of the present undertaking.
[2] As quoted by Hodge. Introductory Lecture, p. 15.
[3] Hippocrates states that this is a fact, and that he had found the difference of a whole month, which he attributes to the “greater strength” of the male.—(On the Nature of the Child, Sect. 11.) I am unaware that this point has been investigated by any modern writer.
[4] “These sounds may sometimes be distinguished several weeks before the mother becomes conscious of the motions of the child.”—Nægele; Treatise on Obstetric Auscultation, p. 50.
[5] Memoire sur la cause des Présentations de la Tête, &c.—Mém. de l’Acad. Roy. de Méd. tome ii.
[6] A. Paré; English Trans., p. 899. Hugh Chamberlen’s Trans. of Mauriceau on Diseases of Women with Child, p. 147, Note. Ennemoser; Historisch-physiologische Untersuchungen über den Ursprung und das Wesen der menschlichen Seele; Bonn, 1824. Cabanis; Rapports du Physique et du moral de l’Homme, tome ii. p. 431.